, before Daddy got sick. The Common was something like the country,
only not half as nice."

"C-couldn't pick flowers in the Common and go barefoot--e--couldn't go
barefoot, Cynthy?"

"Oh, no," said Cynthia, laughing again at his sober face.

"C-couldn't dig up the Common and plant flowers--could you?"

"Of course you couldn't."

"P-plant 'em out there?" asked Jethro.

"Oh, yes," cried Cynthia; "I'll show you." She hesitated a moment, and
then thrust her hand into his. "Do you want to see?"

"Guess I do," said he, energetically, and she led him into the garden,
pointing out with pride the rows of sweet peas and pansies, which she
had made herself. Impelled by a strange curiosity, William Wetherell
went to the door and watched them. There was a look on the face of
Jethro Bass that was new to it as he listened to the child talk of the
wondrous things around them that summer's day,--the flowers and the bees
and the brook (they must go down and stand on the brink of it), and the
songs of the vireo and the hermit thrush.

"Hain't lonely here, Cynthy--hain't lonely here?" he said.

"Not in the country," said Cynthia. Suddenly she lifted her eyes to his
with a questioning look. "Are you lonely, sometimes?"

He did not answer at once.

"Not with you, Cynthy--not with you."

By all of which it will be seen that the acquaintance was progressing.
They sat down for a while on the old millstone that formed the step,
and there discussed Cynthia's tastes. She was too old for dolls, Jethro
supposed. Yes, Cynthia was too old for dolls. She did not say so, but
the only doll she had ever owned had become insipid when the delight of
such a reality as taking care of a helpless father had been thrust upon
her. Books, suggested Jethro. Books she had known from her earliest
infancy: they had been piled around that bedroom over the roof. Books
and book lore and the command of the English tongue were William
Wetherell's only legacies to his daughter, and many an evening that
spring she had read him to sleep from classic volumes of prose and
poetry I hesitate to name, for fear you will think her precocious. They
went across the green to Cousin Ephraim Prescott's harness shop, where
Jethro had tied his horse, and it was settled that Cynthia liked books.

On the morning following this extraordinary conversation, Jethro Bass
and his wife departed for the state capital. Listy was bedecked in
amazing greens and yellows, and Jethro drove